I'm A Man! I'm 40!

I know that it's a different culture, and every culture has different perceptions, customs, and values concerning masculinity/femininity/gender, but some here are just ridiculous!

For example, we regularly eat in restaurants next to obnoxious and loud tables of drunk businessmen. The other night we were sitting next to a table of older businessmen who drinking out of a huge jug of baijiu. All their faces were red and they were getting increasingly loud. All of a sudden one of them started yelling at another and pounding his fist on the table. I asked a Chinese girl we were with what he was yelling about and she said that he was telling the other one he had to drink more. And from what I understood, for no particular reason either. This dispute was so intense that another one of the men had to separate them and console he each one separately to calm them down. After a while things settled down again.

Drinking and smoking are basically rites of passage for men here. The more you drink the more of a man you will be. They are worse than frat boys...well...sometimes. Smoking is also perceived to be a masculine activity (although some women smoke, not nearly as many).

Another thing men do is at the gym, they will take off their shirts in front of everyone and check themselves out in the mirror. I suppose this happens in America, but this happens here when they make sure other men are around to watch them. The same thing happens when they decide to show everyone how much weight they can lift. They will wait until the gym is busy and there are a lot of other people around to max out.

I told my Chinese friend, Jake, that I had started taking yoga classes. He said, "That is so gay! Only women take yoga classes." From what I have seen thus far, that may be true, but then I asked, "What's more gay: Flexing your muscles, half naked, in front of a mirror with a bunch of other guys or being in a yoga class with a room full of women?" He really didn't know what to say to that.

The Chinese also have traditional views on masculine and feminine roles within a relationship. And by "traditional", I mean that they are still oppressive towards women. Here's a quick example:

The other day one of my students came to my office hours because she wanted help studying for her Oral English examination. This examination is huge because passing it gives the student a sort of certification which allows them more leeway when applying for jobs. My student brought into a practice book that had sample questions and answers. She wanted to go over the "Gender" section and these are literally some direct quotes from that section:

"Women have more emotional natures. Some women are very sensitive and narrow-minded."

"Most women have to choose between a successful career and a happy life. As a result most women lose enthusiasm for work once they get married, and take up full responsibility for housework and children, while their husbands pursue careers."

No joke. I was laughing out loud and my student was bewildered as to why I found it so hilarious. I tried to explain it to her as best I could, but she was of the opinion that men and women still have firmly established roles in society and in relationships.

There was also a drawing she had to describe. The drawing was a split between showing a woman stressed out at work and then showing the same woman stressed out at home trying to do housework and take care of the children. The drawing was called "The Double Burden." After laughing, I asked, "Can't the husband help with housework and taking care of the children?" She said that although that is mostly considered the work of the woman, that her parents both shared housework duties, but that that is a bit of an anomaly in China.

Also, concerning relationships. I regularly see student couples fight in public anywhere in campus. Usually, the girl will be crying, yelling, and/or hitting the boy on the shoulders or chest, and the boy, straight faced, will either be standing still or will be attempting to pass the girl. Since girls and boys aren't allowed to visit each other's dormitories, many scenes like this which would normally take place in private quarters take place in public. On the other hand, you can also see couples making out in more "private" corners of the campus.

Like I said before, I know it's a different culture, but some of their views on gender just seem a bit...outdated?...and hilarious.

Sorry to drop a mini-sociological report on you, I just find it interesting!


On a completely different note, many of my students have been getting sick (it's that time of year). If a student is sick, one of their friends usually speaks up for them in class and says, "(Insert name here) has a cold, he/she went to the hospital." At first I thought that "hospital" just meant the school doctor, but this kept on happening. So one day I asked, "When you say hospital, do you mean the actual hospital or the school health center?" Whoever I asked then acknowledged that it was indeed the hospital. So apparently Chinese like to go to the hospital for colds and headaches. Now I think it's just their excuse for skipping class. Pretty dramatic excuse, I should say.

Chinese Thanksgiving

On Wednesday night we went to a club that was just opening up. We know the owner through a friend of a friend. The club owner may have named his club after our Drake friend, Jason, but there is another Jason we hang out with too. In any case, I had a good chuckle when the huge sign for the club read: JASON CLUB. It was great because we got free food and drink the entire night. The thing here is that it is a huge draw (or at least perceived to be a huge draw) to have foreigners at your club. That's why that most clubs we go to where we already have some established rapport, we can usually get free drinks (at least for a while). It's almost like we are half employed with the club, but don't have to do any work!!!

For Thanksgiving day meal the next day, Megan, Mikey, Angela, Tamara (Italian girl), Shirly (Chinese girl), Bence, and I went to Andy’s apartment. Andy is here in the window tinting and solar paneling business (if I remember correctly) and is quite well off here in China. We met him through our Argentinean and Hungarian friends Fabian and Bence, respectively. After Bence agreed to cook, Andy and his visiting friend, Justin, decided to buy all the ingredients. Bence cooked for nearly 12 hours before we were ready to eat at 8 p.m. Unbelievably, even by the last couple of hours, Bence was still dancing, headbanging, singing, and cooking (sometimes all at the same time). I would mostly credit this to Bence being quite ADHD. Apparently Angela helped out too but only at Bence's command: "Stir this" or "Taste this" but that was all the help that Bence wanted or needed. We had turkey, garlic potatoes, mashed potatoes with gravy, garlic bread, cranberry chutney (the only thing that was not made from scratch), fried onions, pumpkin pie, and strawberry cake. The pumpkin pie didn't have the same consistency of pumpkin pie as we know it because we had pumpkin pie made from scratch...yea, that's right. The inside of a pumpkin was literally mashed up to make the filling. Bence said, "I didn't know what a pumpkin pie tastes like or even looks like so this is what I thought it would be" and lo and behold, it was awesome...especially with the homemade whipped cream.

On Saturday morning we went to Handan which is only about an hour and a 1/2 away by train. The Drake people that teach at Handan graciously offered to cook us a Thanksgiving feast and we, of course, accepted. This was literally the biggest Thanksgiving feast I had personally ever seen. Chicken, cornbread, cauliflower, green beans and mushrooms, apple pies, pumpkin bars, mashed potatoes, butternut squash soup, the list goes on and on. There was entirely too much food for the 15 of us so the Drake people that teach there invited about 20 or 30 of their students to help and there was still food left over. Amazing. I could have just laid around and eaten that food for a week and not even cared. We watched as their students performed dances for us...and we showed them the chicken dance, haha. Afterwards we went to a karaoke place, but as most people were still in a Thanksgiving coma there wasn't the energy there usually is at karaoke so we went home and watched Home Alone.

Needless to say, I probably gained 10 pounds in the course of a few days.